The Eagle of the Ninth

by Rosemary Sutcliff Book 1 in the The Roman Britain Trilogy series.

First published 1954

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Roman Britain, in the second century CE. Marcus Flavius Aquila takes command of a frontier cohort while carrying the burden of his father’s disappearance with the Ninth Legion. A disastrous first battle leaves him permanently unfit for military service, but rumours that the legion’s eagle survives among tribes beyond Hadrian’s Wall give him a different way to restore his family’s honour.

Travelling north in disguise with Esca, the British former slave he has freed, Marcus enters country beyond Roman control. Their search becomes both an investigation into the Ninth’s fate and a test of trust between men formed by opposite sides of conquest. The recovery of the standard matters politically, but the novel’s deeper movement is Marcus’s growing recognition that Britain cannot be understood solely through Roman ideas of civilisation and loyalty.